Writing With Your Eyes Closed Takes A Good Memory

I must confess I was feeling pretty lazy today. But, it's hard to feel lazy when you have a story in your head. I'm an expert at it, though.

Part of my problem today is that I'm struggling with a cold. I'm a major wimp when I'm sick. All I want to do is get under the covers and do nothing. I can't just lie there, though. I must create. So, I run through scenes in my mind with my eyes closed.

Maybe you're brain doesn't work that way, but I've been able to develop a skill of working out my next scene with my eyes closed. This only works if you can remember what you've done during such a session. I've learned enough about memory to understand that I must create a well-worn path so that I can remember my scene. 

If you're interested in terminology, what I'm talking about is a neural trace. I teach this to my freshmen students. Bottom line, it takes repetition. How's it work with my scene development? Like this:

In my mind's eye I create the scene I'm working on. I place my characters where they need to be. I construct the setting and then press play like I'm watching a DVD. I only go so far. I keep it to one scene. No scene changes. 

Everyone has their moments of dialogue. I throw in some narration, etc. Then, I press replay. I run through the entire scene again. Then, I press replay again and again and again and again. I may fall asleep pressing replay, but when I wake, I have the scene still in my head because I've developed a neural trace to come back to by repetition.

Over a week of being lazy, I might run through the same scene dozens of times. When I see something new to add, I do it. Eventually, I must write this down, but this mental skill has helped me keep working on a story when, for example, I'm lazy or sick and just don't want to sit at the keyboard.

Revisiting Your Past To Help Your Writing

You ever wonder when you started believing in something, talking with a certain twang (or without it), wearing a specific brand of jeans? If you're like me, some of those details have vanished from recallable memory.

That information, of course, is up there somewhere in my brain, but I can't seem to find it. Think of my memory like a large house with several levels, rooms and hallways. Each room has certain pieces of memories. My problem is that I don't know which floor or down which hall those memories now reside, and even if I did, the doors to the rooms are locked and I've misplaced the keys. 

Come to think of it, those rooms might be so cluttered that those memories might even be packed away in unlabeled boxes in those rooms. Add to this the idea that my memory is more like an endless track of houses in a neighborhood as vast as the horizon on the Texas plains. Each day I keep adding more boxes and more houses.

 I tweeted this the other day:

When's the last time you visited your childhood home and reflected? If you're a writer, you should and take pen and paper.

As an educator, I know that I am who I am because of all I have experienced - especially early in those particularly exciting developmental years of life. My exercise is to rummage through that part of me that existed what seems like a lifetime ago: before I was a husband, father, educator, college graduate, etc., etc. 

I know it will affect (and help) my writing. I just don't know exactly how. That is the exciting part.